author Victoria Riskin will sign copies of "Fay Wray and Robert Riskin" beginning at 6:30 p.m.

King Kong (1933)

Remade several times, but never equaled, King Kong set a record for box office grosses on its opening weekend in early March 1933. The archetypal narrative of the maiden and the beast—Kong and Ann Darrow—this is more than a beloved movie: it has entered the realm of myth. Thomas Pynchon uses a probably apocryphal quote from Merian C. Cooper to Fay Wray in Gravity’s Rainbow: “You will have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood,” a quote that speaks to the changing reception of Kong from seeing him as a monster to the revisionist view of Kong as metaphor for all forms of illicit relations. King Kong also energized the stop-motion animation genre–Willis H. O’Brien’s dinosaurs and ape were in development for over 10 years–, which is alive and well with the contemporary Wallace and Gromit.

The Miracle Woman (1931)

Based on the play Bless You Sister, this would be the first of a dozen collaborations between screenwriter Robert Riskin and Frank Capra—and the second of five between Capra and the mighty Barbara Stanwyck, this time as Florence Fallon, a character allegedly inspired by real-life revival tent evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. An inspiration to the masses, Florence masquerades as a miracle-maker with abandon, but at home, she’s not as happy-go-lucky as her public persona might suggest.